I, Vampire #14Review

With the status quo thoroughly manhandled, Mary has gone from villainous vampire Queen of Blood to reluctant but devoted protagonist, hell-bent on saving the life of Andrew, who went through a transformation of his own from hero to baddest of the bad. With this switch-up, scenes with Andrew have an unsettling vibe. I, Vampire has always been a horror comic, but now the stakes are upped in a twisted way that makes each scene truly terrifying because you don’t know what awful thing Andrew will do next. Just wait until you see what he does to a dog.

Normally, I would now start praising Andrea Sorrentino’s artwork that has consistently been out-of-this-world fantastic, but a few pages seem to have gotten away from him this time. For example, Deborah Dancer looks downright peculiar in some panels, coming off more like one of the Rot-infected humans from Animal man than a regular woman. Just to reiterate, the book still looks great overall with its detailed images steeped heavily in shadow, but a few hiccups stop it from attaining its usual top-notch level.

Speaking of Deborah, she provides a new lens to which we view Andrew, adding an interesting layer to Joshua Hale Fialkov’s violent vampire love story. Fialkov writes each character with a wit that could only come from someone who has read and written a lot of comics, which makes me curious as to why he went with a weak excuse as to why Andrew didn’t choose to use his awesome power to end the conflict when he had the chance. Probably because the book would then come to its conclusion, and given how Fialkov delivers a twist worthy of a standing ovation every 6 issues, I would be remiss not to see issue #18.

Joshua writes for IGN. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl or on IGN, where he will air-bend, Force-push, and optic-blast his opinion into your brain.

Great

The villain/hero flip-flop keeps I, Vampire as strong and unpredictable as ever.